School || Variable three

Kapok entered the house through the exterior door, and was greeted with the sight of his son crouching down, while holding the knob of the interior door.

Kapok’s wife heard him enter, so she approached and stood behind Yew.

"Good evening, Nettle," he greeted her, as he took off his shoes and exchanged them for slippers. "Something happened?" he half-asked, what he was already certain of, based on his wife’s subtle but shrewd smile.

Yew took that moment to slip away, and shoot for the exterior door, hoping to get out and let his parents work out their anger without him around.

"Yew!" his mother yelled out, her smile suddenly gone.

Right after Yew snatched his outdoor shoes, Kapok grabbed his son under the armpits and lifted him up. He didn’t let him go, while he renewed his conversation with his wife. "So? Something happened, right? You look quite happy."

Nettle smiled widely, and finally answered him, "Hyssop returned from school."

"Hyssop?!" Yew suddenly shouted, and threw down his outdoor shoes. His father let him go, and the boy ran out of the entry room and into Hyssop’s bedroom.

"Yew! Your slippers!" his mother shouted after him.

Hyssop’s room was a bit bigger than Yew’s, and it took him a moment to carefully look around, but his sister wasn’t present in her room, so he checked the adjacent bedroom of his parents, but got the same results.

Frustrated, he wondered where Hyssop was, but in a split second he realized where he had to go. He ran to the kitchen, cutting off in front of his parents, who were also about to go inside.

"Hyssop!" Yew called out.

The gal, who was washing the vegetables, didn’t even have time to look around before Yew hugged her from behind.

"Slippers," his mother reminded him as she walked into the kitchen, carrying her son's shoes.

Yew let go of his sister, and put on the indoor shoes. Then he hugged her again. "You’re back!" he said.

"And you forgot aaall about it!" Hyssop noted as she poked his forehead with her wet hand.

Kapok entered the kitchen as well, and sat down on the chair by the table.

"I’m sorry," Yew apologized. "I remembered it this morning, and I was going to come home earlier, but it totally slipped my mind, when I was trying to catch this big fish," he stretched out his arms in order to show how big the fish was. "Argh, why did it slip away?" he grabbed his head with his hands. "If I had gotten that one, I could have given it to you as a present!"

The family laughed.

Hyssop put the last vegetable on the cutting board and dried her hands. Nettle took the board with the washed vegetables to another counter. Whereas Hyssop sat down at the table beside her father. Yew sat next to her, immediately asking his sister about her school life.

"By the way," Nettle interrupted, after she finished cutting the vegetables. "Yew is already ten yrold. He’s about the right age to send him to school."

All kids had to attend a local kindergarten before the age of eight in order to learn basics, such as writing and reading. Yet when it came to schooling, most parents preferred to keep their children home until the age of ten.

Kapok looked at the calendar hanging on the fridge. "He was born nine years ago, so that really makes him ten this year. Hah, I didn’t even realize it until now!"

His bad acting might have fooled Yew, but it didn’t fool Hyssop, who realized that her parents were setting the stage for a more difficult conversation.

Even though Yew always wanted to hear school stories from his sister, he himself didn’t want to go to any school. Thus as soon as his parents mentioned this topic, he made a sour face.

Hyssop decided to save her younger brother by changing the topic. "Mama! Why are babies already one yrold, when they’re born? Pregnancy doesn’t last that long." She recalled something new, which she had learned in school that year.

"You don’t know?" Kapok asked, mildly surprised. "But I guess, it’s not that unusual. Many people just think of it as a tradition."

"Well, the reason is very mystical," Nettle seasoned the soup, before she directed her words to Hyssop. "We all know that a human cannot be born without a soul. But a soul can exist without a body. For this reason, the soul is always born first. They say that the soul chooses the mother and the father for its body. And unless selected by the soul, the couple cannot have a child.”

"Okay, but still why one yrold?" Hyssop inquired again.

"Because, according to a very ancient legend, a soul is born one year before its body is born," Nettle responded.

"I’ve heard a different version," Kapok objected, "that all souls were created before the existence of the world, but they arrive in this world one year before their birth."

"But in the spiritual world, there is no flow of time. Nothing ages there," Nettle pointed out. "So it all arrives at the same conclusion. We count from one, because we count the age of the soul."

Hyssop looked interested but skeptical, as she questioned, "isn’t all of this just a legend?"

"Even legends have a piece of truth in them," Nettle responded. "How about you research more about it once you return to Athena?"

"Yeah, I'll do that."

Seeing an opportunity, Kapok reverted the topic back to Yew's education. "So…," he pinned his son with a stare. "Do you have a school in your mind? Somewhere where you’d want to go?"

"Any school is fine." Yew wasn’t lying. He liked hearing about his sister’s achievements in Athena, but he didn’t care to choose a school for himself. In his opinion, all schools were inhospitable and apathetic, so it made no difference which school he would attend.

"You cannot say that!" Hyssop got angry. "You should always aim for a good school. Of course, there are some schools, which you won’t be able to attend, but still."

"I agree with Hyssop," Nettle nodded. "How about Athena?"

"It’s hard to get accepted, so there’s no point talking about it with my scores from kindergarten." Yew felt unhappy that his family was pushing him to go to such a prestigious school. He didn’t want to stand out. If anything, he wished he was average.

Nettle and Kapok smiled at each other. Kapok left the kitchen for a moment, then returned with a big stack of acceptance letters. He set them down in front of Yew, and exclaimed enthusiastically, "Here we go!"

Nettle laughed gently, before she admitted, "to be honest, we have already sent out applications to every school."

"And you got accepted into every single one!" Kapok said, pleased with his son.

Yew looked at the mountain of papers, displeased that so many schools were willing to accept him even after he sabotaged his own scores in kindergarten. He thought about his father’s words, then voiced out his latest idea.

"Every single one? Including Hades?" For a moment, Yew had hoped that he could go to a school with the worst notoriety. If he couldn’t avoid standing out, at least he could stand out in a way, which made others avoid him.

"Oh, come on!" his mother scolded him, taking his words as a bad joke. "We would never send an application there!"

His father sat down and crossed his fingers on the table, "Well, there were schools which we didn’t consider, like Hades." He scowled at his son with a countenance, which translated to «you-know-why-not-Hades».

Yew began to look through the letters.

"We also did not send any application to Zeus or Hera, because these schools only accept people from royalty, or in rare cases, from nobility." Kapok continued listing schools, which he could never send his son to, for one reason or another. "And you know that Nike doesn’t accept applications."

The school of Nike was known for valuing independence. It was the only school, where connections, money, and fame meant nothing. The school was levitating high above the clouds, and constantly travelling through the sky. It was hard to know its position, and it was even harder to reach it. Those who wanted to study in Nike, had to personally find that school, then find a way to get there using their own skills, strength, and intelligence. If the school found out that a student received help from anyone, that student would be disqualified, and banned from the school of Nike forever.

"Naturally, we also did not send any application to Nemesis or Dionysus," Nettle added.

The school of Nemesis had a questionable reputation. Officially, the school trained their students in the skills of investigation and espionage. Certain famous graduates of Nemesis worked for the Emperor, and protected the citizens by catching the criminals. However, there were also some infamous assassins, who graduated from the school of Nemesis.

"But I could get into Dionysus," Yew stated, then looked at his father. "You’re a merchant, so of course you have a lot of money."

The school of Dionysus was the most expensive school of all. With its luxurious and extravagant sustenance provided to the students, it could easily rival schools like Zeus or Hera. However, it wasn’t a school for royalty or nobility. Instead it was a school for anyone, who had too much money and wished to pamper their children with a lazy life of free stuff and no work.

"We’re not made of money," Kapok noted the reality in a harsh tone. "And graduates of Dionysus have a reputation of being rich spoiled brats. That’s not something we want you to become."

Yew quickly checked the school name at the top of each paper, as if he was searching for one specific school. "I don’t see Tyche here," he pointed out with a smirk of victory.

Nettle rolled her eyes with a sigh. "You know that Tyche doesn’t exist."

The school of Tyche was a rumor. Many researchers carefully checked every place throughout the earth in search of this alleged school, and officially it has never been found. Most people came to the conclusion, that there was no such school. Yet some people still believed in its existence, and once in a while, someone appeared, who claimed to have graduated from there.

"I don’t know. I cannot decide," Yew said as he pushed the letters away.